Note: Just my little take on what things might be like for Kuina now. I liked Kuina very, very much and would like to continue this one with other little stories about her. I hope I don't make anyone upset with this... If you have comments or questions about why I wrote this the way I did or why the feelings she has, I'd love to talk about it anytime.

I think Zoro is probably the deepest character in OP and I think there are a lot of possible layers and ideas to bring out in his relationships with almost everybody, but especially Kuina. Their relationship is/was important on so many different levels. This fic/series is based on the idea that the reason Zoro sleeps so much is because it's the only time he can be with her.

I wanted to write about it my thoughts on them in this fic... but through her. I wanted to make her a little more real. I hope I did a little bit... --Sylphiel


heaven


So there I was, sitting on the porch, waiting for him.

I'm always waiting for him. Watching him as he goes about what he does during the day, trying to experience what he experiences.

Sometimes I don't understand him at all, sometimes he keeps his feelings and thoughts hidden from me. But then there are the other times. When he offers his emotions to me, to see and feel. When he sends his thoughts to me, and without the exchange of words I can know exactly what he wishes me to. Those moments, when he holds my sword close to him, and I feel as if our hearts are one at last.

At last.

He is a difficult person, I think, to sit back and watch. Just the way he walks makes it hard for me not to stand up and run to him. That easy swagger, part of the pretense that the only thing he really cares about is swords and sleep. His way of insisting that pain doesn't bother him, and his blind way of running right into trouble without a glance to the side. Like the stubborn boar he is.

And the things he says...! Can you believe the way he talks to other people? Sometimes I wish I could just reach out and slap him. Somebody's got to. He just acts so arrogant at times. And he can be such a big jerk.

But he's the one who's still alive. And I'm the one who has to sit back and watch him.

Watch him do whatever it is he does when he's not sleeping. That's when he's mine.

I don't know where he comes from when he does, but he arrives somehow, and then I'll see him from afar, walking slowly down the path towards the village, towards my house.

Sometimes I think he stops to look around, no doubt marveling at how strange the surroundings are, the village and everything in in still there, in its place as if time had frozen that day long ago.

I wonder if he thinks it lonely, the fact that the only person there is me. The village is just the way it was, except that there are no people... as if they all simply vanished into thin air, leaving behind houses and gardens and dishes on the tables.

Sometimes I know he stops at the dojo, just as I often do, remembering that day. The day we became one.

In my village the people believe that the soul stays with the body for seven days after death, and then the angels come to collect the soul and take it to heaven. This was, of course, what I had always expected to take place, should I die.

Rather, when it did happen, I found myself standing next to my fallen body, and as people gathered outside, voices hushed, carrying my body away, I stood there, numb and not understanding what had happened.

I watched them carry the dead girl away, down the street and away from me.

I was still angry with my father for the things he had said to me. I hated him for a very long time, and sometimes, I still do, to be honest. He valued Zoro-- a stranger, a disrespectful little brat-- more than his own offspring, who had patiently stood by him and studiously learned everything he had to teach--

simply because of a single, goddamn chromosome.

It fills me with hatred even now. How can a grown man look his own child, his only child, in the face, and crush their dreams ruthlessly? I know, I know, that was just my father's way. He's the product of a different kind of upbringing than we are. Maybe he felt that that was less cruel than letting somebody else tell me. But to me, at the time, and still now, I don't believe a loving parent would do such a thing.

So I went to where I knew he was. That boy I had made the promise with. The boy I had told my secret to. I found him asleep, sprawled out on his futon. The way I should have been. I passed through his window and knelt by him, unable to stop the tears from flowing down my cheeks. What had I done? What had I done to deserve this? Wasn't there any way of going back? I just wanted to be the way I was an hour ago!

Everyone knows that feeling. The wish that you could just turn back one page, or rewind and do that one thing differently. You get it when you drop a dish and stare at it as it hits the floor and breaks. You get it when you survey the remains of a flood or a fire. You get it when you get some kind of terrible news that changes your life forever.

Zoro had it when he heard the news in the morning. I waited by his side, watching his face contort with rage and frustration. I was by his side as he walked in the funeral procession, tears streaming in the pouring rain. I waited by his side as he sat crying in the dojo, before my father, seven days after my death.

He was angry with me for dying, I knew. But I couldn't understand: why all the tears. Why was he so angry? Did we hate each other? Didn't we hate each other?

It was in that moment that I realized that what I had considered hate and rivalry all along were mixed with something completely different. I sat there, staring at this boy who so easily had my father's approval, in spite of all the years and toil I had put in to get the very same for myself. And I saw something that shocked me.

He was angry at my father, too. Because he... a weird, arrogant, little boy... had loved me more than my own father did. He had seen worth and potential in me that the man who had raised me, the man who had held me in his arms at birth, did not.

Zoro had really believed that I could have succeeded, had I lived.

Tears fell from my eyes in rivers. I reached out to touch him, to hold him, but my hands slipped without contact right through him.

I wanted to be together with him.

And then he said it. His voice shook with tears and anger, but he said it anyway. He asked my father for my sword. My father held the sword in his hands, not answering.

At that very moment, something split the skies like lighting tearing open a sail, and I heard a sound like the brush of a million feathers rushing down from the heavens.

I cried out. "Father! Father! Zoro!" I tried to shake them. My father tightened his grip on the sword, wanting to keep it.

"No!" I cried, throwing myself at Zoro. "Father, let me stay with him! I want to stay with him!"

The sound was coming nearer, growing louder. "Father, don't let them take me! Give him the sword! Say it!"

No response.

"Father!" I shrieked. "If you ever loved me, if you ever did one thing for me, PLEASE! Hear me! Let me stay with Zoro!"

"Please take it," my father spoke, placing the sword in Zoro's little hands.

"SAY IT!" The wings were close now, bearing down on me.

"Kuina's sword... her dream..."

"SAY IT!!" I felt the beating of feathers against my face.

"...and soul... are now..."

I ran to Zoro, wrapping myself around him. Gentle hands were reaching out for my arms, but as gentle as they were, I had found something better.

"...yours." I heard my father say, and then a brilliant flash of light blinded me, and I cried out, screaming in fear, and anguish, then joy, as I realized I was safe. In Zoro's arms. In the sword.




And that's my world. It's not really lonely, with his visits and his nearness. I'm not a ghost. I died, yes, but in a weird way I'm still alive, as part of him. I've grown along with him, his life is keeping me alive. I eat, even when I'm not really hungry, I sleep, even though sometimes I'm not truly tired, and I cook and sew and exercise and take baths and go through each day as best I can. I have to find things to keep myself busy.

When the weather is nice, I like to be outside, sometimes occupied in sword drills, sometimes lying in the grass, watching as the scenes of his daily life play out across the sky. Oftentimes I sit on the porch, drinking tea and wondering.

I probably spend most of my time doing that very thing. Wondering. What if?

Regret? I don't know if you could call it that. Regret has to do, usually, with something you yourself have caused. Yes, I didn't have to have been polishing my sword that night. but the passage of time has made that question, that painful and angry self-reproach, fall away like dead skin, revealing a deeper understanding. I don't regret.

No. I don't have a fancy word that sums it up in a few symbolic syllables. Just the simple question, What if?

This is the same question I always have on my lips as I watch him. It was the question I asked when I watched him fall into the mud, tears of anger and pain trickling down his young face, and he strained to get back up to keep training, at the age of eleven. His small body was completely spent and he was coming down with a fever, as a result of having been out in the rain all night. I wanted him to go in and go to bed. He should have been in bed. But he said he couldn't. He was staying outside, getting sick because of me.

It was the same question I had when I watched as he sat alone, in the fields outside the village, on a summer night when he was thirteen. The village was celebrating the summer festival, and all of the other children our age had paired off to dance, eating snacks and laughing, talking together. Playing games and having fun. Yet he sat, holding my sword in his hands, on the rock underneath the old pine tree by the lake. No one there to join him. No one there he wanted to be with.

It was the same question I whispered as I watched when he had his first kiss, at age fourteen. He had chased off a gang of teenage bullies, unintentionally saving another girl in the process. I watched that adoring look on her face as she watched her rescuer, and I knew she was trouble right away. As she thanked him for his help, she leaned forward and kissed his lips quickly, before running away, leaving him stunned.

It was innocent enough, just kids, I guess. But I remember how my teeth gritted, how my fists clenched in futility. How furious I was. That kiss.... should have been....

What if?

I'm sure he had no idea of the jealousy I had, of that one simple moment. He's not mine to be jealous of, after all! And he wouldn't even know why I felt that way. I knew if I ever tried to tell him, he wouldn't understand, being the boy he was. The cruelty of it all, that he was still alive, to experience all of his firsts, and all I could do was watch, unable to share it with him.


It wouldn't be fair to tell him. What could he say, anyway? Thank You? Who could go on and have a happy, full life, always knowing that there was a dead person who loved you? No. I refuse to let my life thread across his in any way more painful than the way it already did. I've ruined him enough.

So like I said, I know he doesn't know. And it's best that way.


Even while I was repeating that thought to myself for the millionth time, suddenly I spotted him on the path, coming towards the house. I felt a surge of excitement at the sight of him. I felt the impulse to run to meet him, to jump up and down, waving my arms to catch his attention. To have him notice me.

"Zoro!" I called out happily, feeling a tear come to my eye.

Something in my mind laughed at me, mocking me for contradiciting the thoughts I had just been thinking. (It's best that way, huh?)

I swallowed back the thought and commanded that voice to be silent, and simply watched him as he approached.

Here he comes. My heaven.



Owari...